The miraculous properties of holy water don’t extend to disinfectant properties, it seems. From a Guardian article about swine flu:
Today, the Bishop of Chelmsford, the Right Reverend John Gladwin, advised his diocese to temporarily end the use of holy water for fear it could pass the virus through congregations. (from the Guardian, 14 July 2009)
Conspiracy theories from http://xkcd.com/258/
In the spirit of this xkcd comic, I’d like to file a bug report on that section of the British public that Had its Say to the BBC on the swine flu epidemic.
You could basically construct almost any one of these farts-in-email format by perming any 3 items from the following list:
This example is a representative classic, in its mixture of selfishness, poor grasp of the English language and anti-labour government ranting.
I suppose we the Tax payer will be paying for the expensive drugs, the additional medical staff and rubbish propoganda material published by good old Gordo and his quango’s
Hmm, these HYS-armchair-generals-turned-medical-experts make me feel pig sick. Even if I didn’t have swine flu, which I apparently do.
Bruce Shneier’s blog discusses how to secure your laptop at international borders. Ignoring the fact that the Shneier methods are impressively ingenious – although, surely, in the sledgehammer-nut category – the truly amazing thing is that any government thinks “security” is served by searching laptops at airports.
I don’t mean “searched to make sure that they aren’t hiding bombs or weapons”. That would be a completely reasonable kind of search.
No, I mean searched, in the sense of “searching the hard drive.” This is absurd, in purely practical terms – ignoring the civil liberties questions – on so many levels. (I planned to list the practical difficulties of the idea, but they should be obvious to anyone who’s ever trawled their own hard disks for hours, in a quest for a two years old cv.)
The gaping elephant-in-the-room sized flaw in the whole procedure is the INTERNET. Any given piece-of-dangerous-information can be sitting comfortably on a computer in end-country x, hours before a courier-with-the-laptop has driven to an international airport in origin-country y. So, why the laptop searches?
Maybe not as edible as Jesus toast – but just as miraculous, hallelujah – the face of Michael Jackson appeared in somebody’s tree. There’s a photo on CNN. 🙂
Calling on the power of the Almighty Rorschach – may His name be praised – I can reveal that it’s REALLY a miraculous image of a cat/owl hybrid in the final stages of swallowing a skinny lizard.
CBS has a gallery of images of the saintly sightings discovered in fast food and household items. Each one is almost more convincing evidence of an all-powerful deity than the next – if that were possible.
Luckily, despite having been specifically singled out by their omnipotent god to receive these magical images, the people who get them often refuse to be selfish.
They choose to share them with the world. On E-bay.
************************
Added bit.
I just spotted a link to this great magical-item-generator on bengoldacre’s bookmarks
“Coffee cures Alzheimer’s.” This sounds like great news for me personally, given that generally I drink enough coffee per day to wake up the population of a small town.
Am I drinking the right amount, though? How much do you need to drink to avoid – nay, cure – the dread disease?
The Independent claims that a modest cup a day will do it.
A coffee a day ensures the memory will stay
The BBC has a more demanding coffee-drinking schedule. And it’s a lot more tentative about the good it will do.
Coffee ‘may reverse Alzheimer’s’
A possible treatment for dementia?
Drinking five cups of coffee a day could reverse memory problems seen in Alzheimer’s disease, US scientists say.
Wait, a mere two cups of coffee might do it.
The mice were given the equivalent of five 8 oz (227 grams) cups of coffee a day – about 500 milligrams of caffeine.
The researchers say this is the same as is found in two cups of “specialty” coffees such as lattes or cappuccinos from coffee shops, 14 cups of tea, or 20 soft drinks.
It may be too pedantic to point out that a latte or cappuccino are defined by the milk, rather than by the caffeine content. I take it they are using these as shorthand for “real” rather than instant coffee. Ground coffee or espresso may just be too unfashionable to mention.
The Daily Express actually led with this news item covering its front page, in some print editions. It thinks two coffees is the magic quantity.
TWO CUPS OF COFFEE A DAY STOPS ALZHEIMER’S
DRINKING two cups of coffee a day reverses the effects of Alzheimer’s, ground-breaking research has revealed.
Scientists say powerful evidence shows caffeine not only helps to stave off the disease but can even treat it, as it helps to sharpen the memory.
This news item is a mite less groundbreaking than it appears. There was a similar story last year. The protective volume of coffee was one cup a day.
“This is the best evidence yet that caffeine equivalent to one cup of coffee a day can help protect the brain against cholesterol.
In that experiment, it was rabbits that got the caffeine. The poor buggers were killed, of course, but at least they they were just regular rabbits, as far as I can make out.*
Not so the mice. They were bred to have symptoms of Alzheimers. I am sure you will correct my neuroscience idiocy but – is that really the same as human beings having Alzheimers? Or so close to the same as dammit?
(I have serious doubts about the applicability of this research to humans. Serious enough to say that – in the astronomically unlikely event that I were ever on a university ethics committee – I’d have said to these experimenters “Not a chance. You haven’t justified doing the Frankenstein thing of breeding creatures to be sick, in this case. First try some epidemiological studies of people.”)
The interesting thing is that the research report itself doesn’t even claim that coffee cures Alzheimers.
Researchers in the US have shown that caffeine can boost memory in mice with Alzheimer’s symptoms.
At the moment it is not clear whether caffeine can have the same effect in people. Researchers are now carrying out trials to see if caffeine can be beneficial for people with Alzheimer’s.(from the Alzheimers Research Trust website)
However, a casual scan of a few news items would leave you thinking that you only need to force a few doppio espressos down the throats of your formerly caffeine-free older relatives and they could emerge brighteyed from dementia.
(* Another paper in the same journal reckoned that
Acetaminophen inhibits neuronal inflammation and protects neurons from oxidative stress
I think that’s paracetemol to us. I’ll start swallowing two with my morning latte.)
If you clicked the link to Barefoot Bum on my last post, sorry. It doesn’t work I just tried and got this message.
This blog is open to invited readers only
http://barefootbum.blogspot.com/
Was it something I said?
(Post edited to make a bit more sense)
“Doctors want right to talk faith” according to an item on the BBC health page about a BMA conference. The piece starts:
Doctors are demanding that NHS staff be given a right to discuss spiritual issues with patients as well as being allowed to offer to pray for them. (from the BBC website)
Doctors? Do NHS “doctors”, in general, feel that they have so much spare consultation time on their hands that they need to fill it with philosophical discussion? Well, no.
It’s those pesky members of organisations like Christian Voice, again. In this case it’s the “Christian Medical Fellowship”
The CMF web page title says :”a Christian perspective on Working Overseas, Ethics, Christian Apologetics, Abortion, Evangelism, Faith in Practice and Medical Training” This is too big to show in a browser title bar but you have to admire how comprehensively it gives the flavour of their interests.
They claim to represent 4,500 British doctors. (Scary, huh, if true?) The centrality of proselytizing to their goals can be seen in the literature offered by HealthServe, their overseas mission wing.
Isa Masih, meaning ‘Jesus the Messiah’, was published from July 1996 – April 1999. These back issues contain news from the Muslim world and resources for Christian students who are working towards bringing the good news of Jesus the Messiah to Muslims in universities and other tertiary institutions worldwide. …
What’s spurred their efforts to influence the BMA was the case of a Somerset nurse who offered to pray for a patient, was suspended then reinstated.
This is the sort of issue that the rabid wing of Christianity loves to make much of, and the media love to treat their complaints as news. (Auxiliary nurses told not to wear crosses and all that.) All following a goal of making religious fanaticism seem mainstream and “Christianity” under threat.
A mainstream CofE vicar (debating the issue with a man from the National Secular Society on BBC Breakfast) was aware that an unsolicited offer to pray for a patient would make her seem like the angel of death.
How much more terrifying to a sick person, if the volunteer pray-er is the doctor or nurse who is treating a patient?
If they really think prayer works, wtf can’t they just go off and do it without having to involve the prayee?
I will charitably pretend that they don’t just want to add numbers to a roll of converts (although this is the likeliest explanation for this evangelising) and that they really want to help people. In that case they must instinctively know that any efficacy of prayer comes from the power of suggestion. The prayers, crosses, and so on, are magical rituals and charms that rely on the expectations of the target.
The placebo effect, if it helps anyone get better. However, even the suggestion that your medical professional wants to pray for you would have a pretty definite nocebo effect on anyone, as it suggests that your doctor thinks you are beyond earthly hope.
of course, as the Chaplain pointed out the other day, if Christians really believed in heaven, why would the sick bother trying to stay alive? Or why would believing doctors be so cruel as to try to keep people away from their happy-ever-after afterlife?
Another crazy ID scheme, this time in India.
ID cards planned for India’s 1.1 billion
Hi-tech entrepreneur will lead operation to create huge database (headings from the story in the Independent)
Here the rationale is not just “terrorism” but also a claim that ID cards will benefit the poor.
…..will help in the delivery of vital social services to the poorest in society who often lack – or are at least told they lack – sufficient identification papers. The government has long complained that most of the money set aside for the neediest is diverted as a result of corruption, and it believes the cards could help to tackle identity theft and fraud.
Hmm. An impressive sleight of hand in “ID-card justification” creation, although the Indian government is clearly following a model similar to the UK one. The “fighting poverty” argument is:
(1) Corruption prevents relief of poverty.
(2) ID cards will prevent identity theft and fraud.
Where is the logical connection between 1 and 2?
I will temporary defy logic and try my best to look at the argument from the pro-ID card side.
Even on the assumption that corruption is the only bar to stopping poverty (which is a big and unjustified leap of faith) doesn’t that make dealing with corruption the main priority?
To get from priority 1 to priority 2, you would have to assume that “identity theft” is the only way that “corruption” works.
You would also have to assume that no “corruption” could possibly be involved in handing over billion dollar contracts to major industrialists.
(This is a leap of faith that is far beyond my jumping abilities. Silly me, I would have assumed that pumping resources in to relieve poverty and to stamp out corruption would be the intuitive way to go. You live and learn, hey?)
You would have to assume that identification documents wouldn’t become another incomprehensible/insurmountable burden for the very poorest that would probably make it even harder for them to access resources. (ditto… This is a leap of faith ….)
And you also need to believe that this won’t give rise to a new set of forms of corruption – in distributing ID documents, forging them, and so on.
Which might illustrate an admirable capacity for inventiveness in the face of survival pressures. But it’s quite hard to see how creating new forms of criminal industry would otherwise bring any benefit to the Indian poor.
The Independent says that the poor ” often lack – or are at least told they lack – sufficient identification papers.”
This scheme will provide a whole new set of identification papers for the poor to be told that they lack, then. From the perspective of the poor, this is a scheme that you could best characterise as “adding insult to injury.”
This is quite an astonishing news item.
East Lancashire youngsters see film on terrorism danger
More than 2,000 10 and 11-year-olds will see a short film, which urges them to tell the police, their parents or a teacher if they hear anyone expressing extremist views.
The film has been made by school liaison officers and Eastern Division’s new Preventing Violent Extremism team, based at Blackburn….
The terrorism message is also illustrated with a re-telling of the story of Guy Fawkes, saying that his strong views began forming when he was at school in York. It has been designed to deliver the message of fighting terrorism in accessible way for children. (from the Lancashire Telegraph)
(h/t Bruce Schneier’s blog)
No, really. It’s a real news item. You can check. I didn’t make it up.
It seems that the area around Lancashire is quite fertile territory for anyone trying to get kids to do free police-work. This blog item is also about kids being recruited to provide low-level spying services in their community. A Sefton school designed posters for a Community Information Box initiative. These are displayed in libraries, buses and so on. Sadly, I can’t find an image of the winning poster online but I’ve had my attention drawn to one.
The poster presents a list of things that public-spirited citizens should look out for and drop anonymous notes about in their local Community Information Box. The list is bizarrely inclusive: from swearing and dog-crap through to real crimes like physical attacks and terrorism.
(I hope that the anonymity is designed to protect the kids from life-threatening comebacks if they accidentally inform on some really vicious people. However, this only works if you assume that really vicious people are not just vicious but are also too stupid to make inferences about who reported them, from the content, context and timing of information. And I rather suspect some of them may have those skills. So, I hope that they also have a child witness protection programme in place. )
I really hope that the school students generated the volunteer informer’s checklist, rather than some adult with no sense of perspective. Because, although I am still womanfully resisting a fear of terrorism that is used to manipulate us out of any concern for our civil liberties, I can’t help but be filled with the fear of creeping totalitarianism.
What a wonderful tool for any authoritarian state – compliant children, ready to report any odd behaviour or unorthodox opinions to the authorities out of fear of potential terrorism.
So, what a good job that our democracy is so secure. It’s not as if real extremists – say, people promoting a myth of indigenous ethic Britishness, frinstance – are getting any spurious legitimacy as a result of a British population that has been driven half-mad by its fear of dicey expenses claims, or anything……… Well, that’s OK then isn’t it?
An interesting Guardian post by school students who found their classroom was covered by 4 cameras and sound recording equipment.
This is a link to Adam Curtis’s page on the BBC website. This has some engaging clips from his new “interactive theatre” show in Manchester. This seems the longest.
Interactive theatre does sound as if it might be beyond boring. Bear with me.
Charlie Brooker wrote about it in today’s Guardian supplement.
About now a sizable percentage of you will be thinking “that sounds wanky”, and starting to back away. Don’t. Because it’s also … well, it’s also a funhouse. To be honest, no one really knows what it is. After a struggle, Curtis himself says it’s “a psycho-political theme experience in which you become a central character. It’s going to be frightening. A walk of enchantment and menace.”
Adam Curtis has made some brilliant TV documentaries. (Wikipedia entry) These clips deal with the same issues, although in a more abstract way. Dare I say “visceral?”
If you prefer a bit more clarity of argument, you might want to try and find Curtis’s more verbally coherent documentaries elsewhere, on Youtube, frinstance.
This is how the BBC described his 2005 Power of Nightmares about how the war on terror was used to generate fear and consolidate neo-con power.
I am overawed by the predictive power of Leviticus, if I’m right in thinking that that’s the book that set the rules for orthodox jews.
As far as I can make out, from this BBC story, (Light sensors cause religious row) orthodox jews aren’t allowed to see by electric light on holy days.
A couple have taken legal action after claiming motion sensors installed at their holiday flat in Dorset breached their rights as Orthodox Jews.
Gordon and Dena Coleman said they cannot leave or enter their Bournemouth flat on the Sabbath because the hallway sensors automatically switch on lights.
The couple’s religious code bans lights and other electrical equipment being switched on during Jewish holidays.
I can’t understand the problem, here. If the hallway sensors detect that it’s dark – the outside world will have street lighting, surely.
So the litigious couple can’t go in the street anyway, as far as I can see. Because then they would be in non-kosher electric light anyway….
Unless street-lighting doesn’t count because those lights are already on when the couple leave their home. In which case, I suggest that they trick the sensors and just switch the lights on permanently in advance of any jewish holiday… Lateral thinking, hey?.
Did Leviticus ban all electric light? Or just proscribe electric light switches and motion sensors but say some lights were acceptably kosher?
As I said at the beginning – this rulebook seems so amazingly farsighted. There must have been real prophets at work, if they foresaw electric lighting a few thousand years ago. Is there anything in there about when we get the jetpacks?
Well, I had to do it, didn’t I? After finding out about the Racist Rev, the failed BNP candidate who was also self-defined as not a BNP member, I had to find out more about his “Christian Council of Britain.” (Link to wikipedia article)
Infuriatingly, it comes top in google for Christian Council while other more innocent – if more authentic – “Christian Councils,” such as Ryedale Christian Council, Telford Christian Council, trail behind.
Site report:
The good news: On the basis of its website, it’s about as real as something that’s not very real.
The bad news: It’s definitely not a spoof site.
Website look and feel:
Like a Vatican website, with a spurious seal and a dramatic Victorian angel statue emitting rays of light and holding a cross as if playing the bass. Gothic-looking Biblical font used for the title.
Content:
Most of the pages don’t work, being “under construction” since 13 June 2008, unless they created it yesterday and got the yyyy bit wrong. Most page links lead to a bit of text saying:
Welcome to the new website.
Please be patient as it is still under construction!
Which isn’t bad, considering the shite I expected it to say. Racist Christians must have the proverbial patience of Job. (I am assuming that means “a lot of patience”. My apologies, if Job turns out to have been really impatient, being so annoyed by getting a name meaning “what you do for wages”)
The most recent – indeed only – entry on its “Sunday Lunch” Blog discusses an article in the Daily Telegraph, from November 23, 2007. Like most things on the site, the post date is 13 June 2008, suggesting it was brought in with other old guff when this site was set up and that nobody’s looked at it since.
The About us is possibly wishful thinking. It claims an executive of seven PLUS a national council. It generously says you don’t have to be a Christian to be on the council, which must improve its odds of getting members, but I still doubt that there is a membership roll greater than the number of people I could fit in my bathroom.
Articles has 3 entries in one post by “Revd RMB West, Moderator, Christian Council of Britain.” The word “self-styled” is unaccountably missing. Think about getting stuck in a bus queue with a bigoted drunk who’s carrying the Daily Mail and you have the flavour.
Latest news is the only thing I can find that has much in the way of content. It’s not “latest news” in the sense of being particularly recent. But it does seems to be the “latest” news on this site, so I have to hold off on the phone call to the trade Descriptions Act.
It is a doozy (whatever that is) The piece is a response to the CofE’s General Synod’s call to Christians to oppose the BNP. You can imagine how welcomed that was by the Christian Council.
Whoever wrote it (“albert”) starts off trying to present it as if he is just someone who thinks the BNP is being misrepresented. However, he soon shifts to saying “we” rather than “the BNP.” He has already failed in the first paragraph.
The call of the Synod of the Diocese of Chelmsford is misconceived in that the British National Party is not a racist part, nor does it recommend or countenance politics of racial or national misbehaviour. ……. The British National Party is the only political party not seeking to do this; but rather to ensure a future for the indigenous peoples of these islands.
Indigenous people’s rights? Who are these noble savages? He must mean “celts”, given that we don’t know much at all about who lived here before them. How are they to be identified then? Are they hiding on the dark side of a mountain on Anglesey?
Ah. They don’t have some secret genetic science that can identify the indigenous peoples. The answer’s in genesis. Goddidit. He just forgot to avoid confusion by stopping people from all over the world coming to the UK over a few millennia.
It is the will of God that the one race of mankind be divided into nations or descent groups with each having its own homeland where its interests, identity and values can be protected, upheld and promoted (Genesis 10: 5, 32; Acts 17: 26-27) . (from the Christian Council site)
In case you remain as confused as I am over the whole concept of Britishness, as expressed by the Rev, it’s an “ethnic” concept of Britishness. Yes, this explains nothing. The term “ethnicity” is as clear as mud, and I’ve studied Anthropology – it’s a shorthand description of a few cultural traits, at best, and by its nature, it is constantly evolving:
BNP UNDERSTANDING OF BRITISHNESS
.. Hitler sought to deprive the ethnic Poles of their identity and homeland by mass immigration from the Third Reich of ethnic Germans. Surely it is the denial of ethnic identity to the native British population which is analogous to what Hitler tried to do in Poland; and it is the mass immigration lobby, therefore, who are the far right and are practising what they accuse everyone else of doing.
Revd RMB West, Christian Council of Britain
Well, no, “mass immigration” lobby? (D’uh? name one person in it?) “the far right”. Blimey! This means that the term “the far right” is a dirty word, even to the BNP. (Well, for propoganda purposes anyway.) I shudder to think of what the BNP would see as “far right”.
There is something very disturbing about fascists claiming legitimacy by stealing the story of anti-fascism. The BNP are increasingly trying this trick – confounding bigotry with patriotism. Making racism appear patriotic. As Charlie Brooker’s old school-teacher said, they are insulting the memoriy of everyone who died or suffered in fighting fascism.
Today’s BBC’s Big Question was discussing the premise that the Buggering Nutters Party had a right to be heard.
The aforementioned “big question” was effectively decided by the very format of the programme, given the fact that BNP people were central to the discussion, so they were obviously getting heard. There were some very good audience and panel responses to them, but still, it’s hard not to see this as a pretty generous BBC platform. Their representatives were able to showcase their policies throughout the whole programme.
I was briefly stunned to see a vicar, in full clerical dress.
The BNP are indeed becoming masters of manipulation. They have already annexed the Union Flag, thus leaving non-racist English people with the red on white cross, (which was previously associated only with another miniscule fascist party, called the League of St George.) Along with UKIP, they hijacked the image of Churchill in their election propoganda. (Trying to connect their fascist nature with an image that only has power because of a war against fascism…. Ironic, n’est ce pas?) As well as stealing this iconic Tory figure, they have stolen policies from old Labour – building a manufacturing base, expanding British mining, and so on – allowing them to build a base in the least politically-aware parts of the working class.
All in support of a racist project that they barely bother to conceal . Unsurprisingly, they don’t bother to hide it because it’s their basic USP.
And there they are, on the BBC, with a vicar – a failed BNP candidate – as if they are now trying to annex the Church of England. He’s wearing a dog-collar and what looks like a bishops top – except it’s green. The identifying subtitle – not available for ordinary audience members -calls him Reverend blah. (It lists his church as Baptist Beans or something.)
I momentarily suspect that Rowan Williams has really fallen asleep on the job.
Nah, Phew. It’s just a bit of subliminal political chicanery. It turns out the Racist Rev isn’t a CofE vicar. But you have to do a fair bit of searching to find that out.
From Seismic Shock:
Back in 2006, Reverend Robert West was suspended from the Tory Party for addressing a BNP meeting. He went on to set up the Christian Council of Britain, which although claiming to represent ‘Christian values,’ was little more than a front group for the racist policies of the BNP.
Since then, various Christian organisations have denounced the Christian Council of Britain, whilst the BNP’s religious tactics have been reported in the Christian press. Back in December 2008, the General Synod of the Church of England voted to ban clergy from joining the BNP.
Suffice to say, Rev West is none too happy.
This Sunday, Rev West addressed a congregation in the Baptist Chapel in Barton in the Beans, Leicestershire, deploring the General Synod’s decision. (from Seismic Shock)
He comically sought asylum from the BNP, when he got into trouble with the tories for giving aid and comfort to the BNP.
Rev’d West claimed his action was sparked by a desire to “seek “refuge from political correctness by applying for asylum with the British National Party – Britain’s finest and most decent party – in our country’s hour of need.”
Ironically Rev’d West taught political philosophy and equal opportunities law at the universities of Nottingham and East Anglia, was also a member of the Lincolnshire Council for Racial Equality. (My emphasis)
But, switching to the BNP, he claimed Cameron’s A-list, an attempt to boost numbers of women and black candidates, was “discrimination of the worst kind.”
(From antiracistnetwork)
I guess that having lost his election attempt, that makes him a “failed asylum seeker.” (Control orders – where are they when you need them?)
The Daily Mirror (“Fake vicar leads the bigots’ bid “) cast doubt on his vicar credentials, in its brief but informative list of the backgrounds of BNP candidates – which included the party leader’s own attempt to play the Christian card.
“The ex-National Front chairman said Jesus would vote BNP if alive today”
Well, maybe, if the BNP was standing for election in Palestine. Unless they mean, if Jesus was a racist UK voter.
It seems the BNP see a move into the knee-jerk Christian realm as step forward for them. According to Ekklesia:(BNP helping to establish church group based around racial ideology)
The confirmation followed speculation previously reported by Ekklesia, that members of the British National Party (BNP) were involved in setting up a ‘Christian front.’….
“The Christian Council of Britain is a group set up to represent Christian values and the Christian Heritage of the country” West told the programme. ..
Asked how many members his church had, West said; “at this stage there aren’t very many but that is always the way when you are beginning something. You have to believe what you are doing is right.”….
The presenter then asked him whether there was a link between his church and the BNP.
“There is a link in that the BNP has encouraged and facilitated the formation of the Christian Council of Britain. They are working as facilitators. They are supporting what we do” West said.
He denied however that he himself was a member of the BNP. But, he said, the church group “arose in connection with the Nick Griffin trial.”
It seems that the word “Christian” is a weapon in the would-be fascist arsenal. On the model of the US religious right, I assume. The US right have already been pretty successful in hijacking the term as a synonym for “wingnut.” It is depressing that the BBC has inadvertently been suckered into the process of redefinition.
Give me a minute to get over the shock of finding myself in agreement with Cameron Diaz. *pause*
A Guardian CIF Green post by Brendan O’Neill accuses Diaz of expressing a fashionable “Malthusianism” for saying that there are too many people in the world. He claims
We’ve got all the space in the world
Cameron Diaz is parading the latest Malthusian fashion, that the world has too many people. Ignore her, it’s wrong, wrong, wrong.
It’s official: Malthusianism, the belief that there are too many people on the planet, has become fashionable. A-list fashionable. Alongside the grumpy old men in grey suits who have traditionally made up the Malthusian lobby, Hollywood starlets now bemoan the burden of humanity on the planet.
Nah. Brendan’s argument is wrong, wrong, wrong.
I really hope you weren’t getting paid for this CIF piece, Brendan. Because that would be a non-zero portion of the planet’s limited resources getting misdirected.
Yes, we have got all the space in the world.
That’s pretty much true by definition. It just means the world has its own allotment of space.
However, it doesn’t mean the world isn’t overpopulated, nor that the earth can absorb a few more billion human life forms.
Air, water, fuel, the survival of other species, our dependence on a working ecosystem – somehow, these don’t factor into Brendan’s vision of the world. He just takes as an item of faith that the food supply can be expanded more or less indefinitely through industrial production. Through the application of the human ingenuity of billions of people.
Give me a break. Even if that were true – and if you could ignore the effects on the ecosystem and generate raw materials through magic (which I can’t believe for a minute) – what specific evidence does Brendan have that people will start coming together to apply rational solutions to the creation, use, disposal and fair distribution of materials?
A recognition that the earth can’t hold an infinite number of humans doesn’t imply that you are a follower of all the thoughts of a 19th century economist who also noticed this.
Nor does it mean that you want to kill off loads of existing people (as Brendan suggests) nor that you share any other ideas with the BNP (as Brendan suggests) nor with the Duke of Edinburgh (as Brendan suggests) nor even with David Attenborough (as Brendan suggests.)
This is the central problem with Malthusianism: it looks upon population growth as the only variable, and everything else – from food production to industrial development to human ingenuity itself – as fixed. In short, founded on a negative view of humanity as incapable of resolving its problems or improving the world, it can only see more humans as something to worry about, a harbinger of disaster. In this sense population scaremongering is a fatal distraction, focusing people’s attention on the “problem” of overpopulation rather than on what we can do collectively to make the planet a better, wealthier, more fruitful place for hundreds of billions of human beings.
It seems that nothing can shake Brendan’s utopian vision of collective human action to make the planet better. But some very basic biology lessons might shake his faith in the capacity of the any species to survive if it becomes too numerous for its environment.
Hundreds of billions, indeed. Has he got any idea of what the world population is? If there were hundreds of billions we’d have to start rationing air.
He ends with this wonderfully comic bit. Comic because it treats a 30-year-old newsbite from a musician with no expertise in the subject as if it was intrinsically more worthy than an uninformed rant from Joe Normal in the pub.
Comic, because it implies that money can somehow feed people. (Chocolate coins, maybe)
And it’s a comic piece of celeb-quoting, because, in any case, Lennon’s last sentence undercuts the whole assumption that there is enough of everything for everybody
So ignore Ms Diaz. I preferred it when celebs had a more positive outlook. Asked on a 1970s chat show about overpopulation, John Lennon said it was a “myth”: “We have enough food and money to feed everybody. There’s enough room for us, and some of them can go to the moon anyway.”